Thinking of Brad Carson

Marna Walle

Before I left work on Friday, I heard the sad news about Brad's passing. I've been gardening all weekend, and that has given me a lot of time to think about how he is friend to me, and a fabulous SHARE supporter.

There are two things that stand out in my mind about Brad:

I was thinking of all the things that Brad had done for SHARE, and all the things we had talked about together technically. In every single one of the things I remembered, everything he said was positive. Even when I know he could have said something negative about the function he used, the installation problems, the PTF that was giving him problems - every time he put it in a positive way. For that, I remember him as someone who always finds the postive thing to say, when he doesn't necessarily have to.

I remember Brad being one of the first people to sign up for an MVS project dinner. He would agree to sit with an IBM manager when I was trying to get customers instead of IBMers to sit with a manager, even though I suspect that he'd rather sit with others, but he always would cheerfully agree to it. I think often it was to make me happy and help out (which I appreciated), but I'm sure the managers also enjoyed his company. The most imbedded memory I have of Brad, is walking into the lobby to meet the dinner crowd, and Brad being one of the first people there. Just grinning when I saw him, to make sure that I crossed his name of the list so that I knew he was there. He was genuinely happy to be there. Anyone that knows Brad, knows that smile he has. It just goes along with his positve outlook. There will be no MVS dinner that I walk to the lobby of, and don't expect to see Brad's smile there to greet me.

From these two items, I'm going to do better at doing things like Brad: I'm going to always think of finding the positive side of a situation, and I'm going to arrive with a smile when I meet people.